NeoOffice/J 1.1 Announcement

From NeoWiki

Planamesa Software and the NeoOffice.org community have made available the following media release to use when announcing NeoOffice®/J 1.1 in your country or region. Background information is available in the NeoOffice®/J Press Kit.

Announcement [en]

Media Release

Contact:
community AT neooffice DOT org

NeoOffice®/J 1.1 for Mac OS X Released

June 22, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Introducing NeoOffice®/J 1.1

Sunnyvale, California, USA - Planamesa Software and the NeoOffice.org community are proud to introduce NeoOffice®/J 1.1, a Mac OS X-native version of the OpenOffice.org office suite that includes Microsoft Office-compatible word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing applications.

"This release is the culmination of many thousands of volunteer hours," said NeoOffice®/J creator and primary developer Patrick Luby. "As a result of this tremendous effort, we have a very stable, full-featured office suite for Mac OS X that supports dozens of languages."

A Feature-Complete, World-Class Office Solution

NeoOffice®/J 1.1 provides compatibility with Microsoft Office and Corel WordPerfect and offers a robust feature set common to all major office suites, including the ability to track changes as a document is forwarded from one user to another. NeoOffice®/J can export to many formats such as PDF, HTML, Flash, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Its native file format is open and XML-based, freeing users’ documents from vendor lock-in, a frequent complaint against proprietary office suites.

NeoOffice®/J 1.1 also offers localized user interfaces in forty languages and supports text entry in Roman and non-Roman scripts, including South Asian, East Asian, right-to-left and complex text layout scripts. This has allowed individuals and organizations across the globe—from schools to non-profits to corporations—to adopt NeoOffice®/J as their primary office suite.

"We've leveraged OpenOffice.org's amazing internationalization efforts, which makes NeoOffice®/J a great solution for Mac OS X users all around the world," said core engineer and NeoOffice.org founder Ed Peterlin.

A Simple Idea

"When I started the NeoOffice®/J project, there really was no viable alternative to Microsoft's Mac version of Office," noted Luby. "There were other Mac word processors, but few that included spreadsheet and presentation support. The cross-platform OpenOffice.org suite incorporated all three and featured strong compatibility with Microsoft Office documents. So creating a native Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org seemed like a good idea."

"NeoOffice®/J 1.1 is a standalone, double-clickable Mac application and does not require additional X11 software," said Peterlin. "Our goal is to make NeoOffice®/J 100% indistinguishable from any other Macintosh application in look-and-feel. Version 1.1 is a major step in that direction."

Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Spotlight Support

NeoOffice®/J 1.1 also includes NeoLight, a plugin for Spotlight, the new search feature in Apple's Mac OS X 10.4. "With this plugin, your NeoOffice®/J files will be indexed and can be searched instantly in a familiar, Mac-like fashion," added Peterlin. "It's just another way we're working to integrate with the full Mac OS X experience."

Open Source Development

NeoOffice®/J uses the open source development model to leverage the resources of a global community of volunteer programmers, users and testers.

"My goal was to create a self-supporting, volunteer-based project to build an office suite for Mac OS X," said Luby. "I felt that if people really wanted an application like NeoOffice®/J, they would help by reporting bugs, answering support questions, and maybe even making donations."

"As the user base has grown and become more involved, NeoOffice®/J has benefited and improved accordingly," Luby added. "It is the combined contributions of our users that have made NeoOffice®/J what it is today, and this release is only the beginning."

Availability

Released as free, open source software under the GNU General Public License, NeoOffice®/J 1.1 is available now at http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/. Users are encouraged to download and freely distribute the software. Development of the application is ongoing by volunteer programmers, beta-testers, artists and writers. Interested parties are invited to visit http://trinity.neooffice.org/ for more information about helping with the project.

About Planamesa Software

Planamesa Software is a software development consulting company owned and operated by Patrick Luby. Luby has spent nearly a decade working as a software developer in a variety of commercial and open source projects including OpenOffice.org and Apache Tomcat using the C, C++ and Java programming languages on a variety of operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows.

About NeoOffice.org

NeoOffice.org is home for the NeoOffice®/J open-source community and features news, downloads, FAQs, discussion forums, a bug reporting system and more for NeoOffice®/J developers and end users. NeoOffice®/J's "Aquafication" and other development is ongoing, and interested parties are invited to help with all aspects of the project.